THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF ROALD DAHL “THE LANDLADY”
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THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF ROALD DAHL
“THE LANDLADY”
Ni Wayan Ita Sudiarti
Non Regular Program of English Department Faculty of Letters and Culture Udayana University
Abstrak
Judul dari karya ilmiah ini adalah “The Characterization of the Main Characters of Roald Dahl “The Landlady”. Metode yang digunakan dalam menganalisis cerita pendek ini diperoleh dari salah satu cerita pendek “The Landlady” karya Roald Dahl dan teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah dokumentasi, sedangkan metode dan teknik analisa data yang digunakan adalah kualitatif. Temuan yang diperoleh dari analisis ini adalah (i) dalam factor internal (alur, tempat, tema, sudut pandang dan gaya) sebagai unsur dalam menganalisis data. (ii) dalam factor eksternal (sosiologis, fisiologis dan fisikologis), setiap karakter dalam cerita pendek terdapat ketiga factor eksternal tersebut.
Keywords: main character, internal factor, external factor
Literature as one aspect of language appreciation is used as a media to explore the language to be more aesthetic and meaningful. It is quite another way to express the world around it through our imagination (Jones, 1968). Literature can also be defined as creative and an art. A good literary work must educate and entertain. It has a quite important role to contribute various messages to the society at large so that the reader will be closer to their neighborhood. The readers, consciously or not, are taught how to understand life, how to say and how to act, etc. Some experience and knowledge could be obtained here as well that lead the reader to become more sensitive and wiser in facing the problems in this world.
Basically, character can be divided into two kinds, the main character and supporting character, depending on the role of the character in a story. The character can be described wholly in terms of three aspects, that are physiological aspect, sociological aspect and psychological aspect. The story in this short story represents one of Dahl's most famous stories and it has been dramatized on television at least once. It is one of my favorite endings too, simply because it is so simple, subtle and scary.
Therefore, the problems that will be highlighted in analyzing the short story The Landlady are focused on the characters. The problems discussed in this study are as follows: 1. Who is the main character in the short story The Landlady by Roald Dahl?
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2. How does the writer describe the main character in terms of physical appearance,
personality, motivation, relationships, and conflict in the short story The Landlady by Roald Dahl?
The aim of this study, basically, is to show who the main character in the story The Landlady’s because principally there are the main character and supporting characters that act in a story. The characters can also be divided into simple and complex character. So, by this analysis hopefully we can differentiate between the main character from supporting character, and know how to categorize it into major and minor character appropriately. Another aim of this analysis is also to find out more deeply about the physical appearance, personality, motivation, relationships, and conflict of the character in Roald Dahl’s The Landlady.
Research method is an important step and procedure when we want to conduct a scientific research. The research, which consists of obtaining a group of data, determine the research method. The method is divided into 3 points, they are data source, data collection, and data analyze.
The data source of this study was in written form and would be taken from the short story entitled The Landlady by Roald Dahl. The short story was assumed at the same time as the object of study and as well as the source of the data. The short story also contains many literature elements such as theme, setting, plot, point of view is clearly shown by the author.
The data of this study were collected theory documentation method supported by note taking technique. Firstly, the short story was read repeatedly and carefully in order to understand the content of the story. The next step was taking notes of which parts of the short story provide information about the main character and supporting character, which are relevant to the analysis.
The collected data were analyzed qualitatively based on the theoretical basis for characterization. All the data collected were classified into certain categories. To determine the data belonging to certain point of analysis, the data were copied from the short story first and categorized the data according to sociological dimension, psychological dimension and physiological dimension. The data were analyzed based on the characterization theory available.
In analyzing characters, we could know there are 4 type characters that we could
identify in the story The Landlady. The four type of characters include the following:
However, only 3 types of characters were found in the story. The Landlady, namely, around character, flat character, and dynamic character.
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1. The type of character of the Landlady is a Round character. As the story goes we all know the real intention of the landlady to the boy. She changed from a hearth-warmed old woman into a cold blooded psychophat murderer.
Billy set down his cup on the table, and started at his landlady. She smiled back at him, and then she put out one of her white hands and patted him comfortingly on the knee.
‘How old are you, my dear?’ she asked.
‘Seventeen.’…
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2. Billy Weaver is a Static Character because from the beginning his character did not change. He was an innocent young man from the beginning to the end of the story.
"Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy-blue overcoat, a newbrown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine. He walked briskly down the street. He was trying to do everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was the one common characteristic of all successful businessmen.
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3. And the Porter, Mr. Greenslade, Christopher Mulholland, and Gregory W. Temple. All are included as Flat characters, because they appeared only once or two times in the story and their characters are not fully developed.
Physical Appereance
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1. Billy Weaver’s physical appearence : In this short story Billy Weaver is described as a tall, handsome, young man with beutifull looking Teeth. This is clear from the following quotation:
But they were incredibly handsome, both of them, I can promise you that. They were tall and young and handsome, my dear, just exactly like you.in fact I’m sure he was, and his teeth weren’t quite so white. You have the most beautiful teeth, Mr. Weaver, did you know that?(Paragraph 50).
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2. The Landlady’s physical appereance : In this short story she was described as a quite old woman, and has very warming smile . The color of her eyes was blue and she had a round shaped face. Look at the following quotation for physical description about Landlady:
She was about forty-five or fifty years old, and the moment she saw him she gave him a warm welcoming smile.
She had a round pink face and very gentle blue eyes. .”(Paragraph 14)
With this appearance no one would suspect her as a psychopath murder. However, this attitude and behavior of her was proved with 2 victims that she killed and no one knew about her deed.
Personality
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1. Billy Weaver’s personality was described as a pretty model citizen. At the age seventeen, Billy is doing well, industrious, smart, thrifty, and not tied down by a family. He wanted to show that he was an independent young man. It was described in terms of the way he dresses in a rather old fashioned way, despite his young age. Look at the following quotation for this description of Billy Weaver:
He was trying to do everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was the one common characteristic of all successful businessmen. He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. He was wearing a new navy-blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit. (Paragraph 5).
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2. The Landlady’s personality was described as a good person with blue gentle eyes. However, we thought that there was something mysterious with the landlady. The following quotation shows this very clearly:
She seemed terribly nice. She looked exactly like the mother of one's best school-friend welcoming her into the house to stay for the Christmas holidays. Seventeen!” she cried. “Oh, it’s the perfect age! Mr. Mulholland was also seventeen. (Paragraph 70).
The evidence presented above indicates that there was something odd and myterious about the Landlady. We discover that the landlady seemed to have been expecting someone agreeable to come for a stay, though this chance of being true might seem impossible. The
following dialogue between the Landlady and Billy Weaver shows this deep expectation on the part of the Landlady:
He pressed the bell. Far away in a back room he heard it ringing, and then at once. It must have been at once because he hadn’t even had time to take his finger fromthe bell-button the door swung open and a woman was standing there.”I saw the notice in the window,” he said, holding himself back. “Yes, I know.” (Paragraph 16)
Motivation
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1. Billy Weaver’s motive in this short story is to seek a job and become sucesseful bussinesman. So, he left his family and started his career in new place. Look at the following quotation for Billy’s optimistic behavior as a young businessman:
Billy thanked him and picked up his suitcase and set out to walk the quartermile to The Bell and Dragon. He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr. Greenslade at the head office in London had told him it was a splendid town. (Paragraph 4).
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2. The Landlady’s motive was not clear when the story began. Why did she act kindly to the man that she never knew before? She gave a cheap charge to the boy, at the end of the story we know that the landlady’s real motive was to make Billy as one of her victim, to be added to her art collection.
Following quotation for The Landlady’s choosen to be a victim :
Billy set down his cup on the table, and started at his landlady. She smiled back at him, and then she put out one of her white hands and patted him comfortingly on the knee.
‘How old are you, my dear?’ she asked.
‘Seventeen.’…
Relationships
The relationship between the two major characters at the beginning of the story seemed to be only a business relation, that is, one between Billy and the landlady, we tend to assume that Billy and the Landlady were just the hotel visitor and the owner of the hotel in which
Billy would stay for some nights. However, at the end of the story we all come to know the relation between Billy and Landlady turned to be one between the victim and the murderer.
After the discussion in chapter three, we can find out that Billy Weaver was the protagonist character because he played a large role in the outcome of the story. And the second major character was the Landlady herself as the antagonist. Both of these characters are important because they were not the pleasant persons as they appeared to be and were in fact ruthless murderer and murdered. These two characters were also the major characters because they played an important role in the story’s progression.
The story doesn't show the reader how the story The Landlady comes to an end. Because it is an open-ended story, it leaves the readers to create their own image of what would happen next. They have to pay close attention to the story to realize how Billy has caused tension and suspense on the part of the readers.
The Landlady had not been given a proper name, making her seem more mysterious. She was a middle-aged woman who lived alone and owned a bed and breakfast for people to stay in. She is 'slightly dotty' and her appearance is as charming as ever. However, the Landlady seems to fit this description right up until the end of the story. Only the clues that the last two guests were upstairs, the way she knew every little detail of how they looked but could not remember their names, and the fact that she was a taxidermist tells that she is not the harmless woman we are led to believe.
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